I used to know a guy, tall, blond, angular, Brit, lived on South Beach, with his own his sense of couture. He’d been to Thailand and had taken to wearing sarongs, those long, wraparound skirts that look right on a Thai but on him looked like he was wearing a towel. We’d go long stretches without…

Dear Reader, I’ve missed you. Yes, I’ve been posting Meatless Mondays every week on Huffington Post’s Green page, but it’s not the same as the quirky posts I do here. I’ve also been writing a book (see above). Feeding the Hungry Ghost: Life, Faith and What to Eat for Dinner comes out next month…

I am abject. I am not the kind to up and disappear. So where the hell have I been? Finishing the manuscript of Feeding the Hungry Ghost, my book due out in January. It has required a fair amount of care and feeding, itself. But it has introduced me to so many wonderful people (and…

“Summer surprised us,” writes T.S. Eliot. The phrase comes early in “The Wasteland’ and it surprises the reader, too, already so lost in the poem’s rich layers as to be startled by these five simple syllables that come in the seventh line. Summer always surprises me, especially September, which I still associate with fall, with…

I’ve been at work on a book called Feeding the Hungry Ghost, which while peppered with recipes is not quite a cookbook, it’s like this blog — it talks about food but it also talks about faith. It’s not driven by nutritional information, it’s driven by narrative, by story. A literary agent initially interested in…

I am just back from Austin, where I attended my first-ever IACP conference. This is not, as a friend thought, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, but the International Association of Culinary Professionals. I am a card-carrying member. I am a professional. But I also know I could be doing more to forward my…